As was our hunch with yesterday's report on the prize winners, including Grand Prix designate Willem, the prize going to Akira Toriyama was an anniversary prize like those given out in past years, although articles like this one cite the cartoonist's massive worldwide sales success as opposed to how he might have done in the authors voting that produced a finalists list from which Willem was selected. That same article notes that around 1/3 of the authors eligible to vote took the time to do so. I would have thought there were more than 1500 qualifying cartoonists, but it could be that I'm just used to North American shows where there's a different standard and one that usually includes all sort of non-comics makers in the professional ranks.

I would imagine that Toriyama's special prize will mean some sort of major exhibit on his work or manga more generally at the 2014 show, the same way that the Uderzo exhibit this year seemed to have served as a popular counter-balance against a modest Jean-Claude Denis retrospective.

If you'd like some Angouleme-related stuff to look at maybe not just the stuff that's in the Collective Memory a bit down the page, you can familiarize yourself with the grand prix winner here, you can enjoy the exquisite cartoon imagery of special prize winner Akira Toriyama here, and you can look at a whole bunch of 24-Hour Comics made just for the show here. If you're looking for something not on a screen to read coming out of the show, I like both of the UK works that won awards: this one and this one.